WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama is opening a new advertising assault on challenger Mitt Romney’s record as a businessman — his primary strength with an American electorate still deeply worried about the economy — casting the likely Republican nominee as a greedy entrepreneur who bought up companies and wiped out jobs.
The unusually long two-minute ad began appearing Monday and will be aired Wednesday in five U.S. states that have a history of voting for both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. It uses interviews with former workers to recount the restructuring and ultimate demise of a Missouri steel mill after it was bought by Romney’s investment company. Romney still maintains a financial interest in the company.
“They made as much money off of it as they could. And they closed it down,” says Joe Soptic, a steelworker for 30 years. Jack Cobb adds: “It was like a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us.”
The attack on Romney intensifies a separate $25 million, monthlong ad campaign already under way in nine states.
Obama opened business Monday with a commencement address at all-female Barnard College in New York City before heading to two campaign events later in the day.
Speaking to graduates of the class of 2012, Obama recalled the recession that was gripping the country when he graduated nearly 30 years ago from Columbia College, just across the street from Barnard.
The president said opportunities for women have grown exponentially since he left Columbia. And they will continue getting better, he said, despite the lingering effects of the Great Recession and stubborn 8.1 per cent unemployment.
“As tough as things have been, I’m convinced you are tougher,” he said.
In the course of a week of global economic and military diplomacy — the G8 and NATO summits — Obama also holds campaign events in Florida, Missouri, Iowa, Nevada and North Carolina, where he will focus on Romney’s role at Bain Capital, a company he co-founded.
Vice-President Joe Biden was holding two days of events in Ohio, where he was expected to discuss Romney’s role as a corporate buyout specialist.
Romney campaign officials said they “welcome” any discussion about jobs. “Mitt Romney helped create more jobs in his private sector experience and more jobs as governor of Massachusetts than President Obama has for the entire nation,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement.
The former Massachusetts governor was spending the day in Boston, with no public events scheduled, after delivering a commencement speech at an evangelical university in Virginia on Saturday.
Romney has accused Obama of attacking free enterprise and calls the criticism of his business background an attempt by Democrats to distract voters from the president’s record.
Both candidates are trying to shift the focus back to voters’ No. 1 issue, the economy, from social issues that dominated the past week after the president announced his support for gay marriage.